There are a great many toy construction sets on the market and a great many toys which are based on the theme of construction sets. Most construction sets have been made out of dense and hard materials, and do not enable flexile free-form connections. Even the prior foam connectors sold for toy “noodles”, or the connectors of the type described in our earlier U.S. Pat. No. 6,641,453, while extremely useful, are, however, limited to intersections at fixed rigid angles, relying on the flexibility of the noodles to achieve non-standard angles. This can limit the toy-play experience by the users.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,498,190 describes a toy for making sculptures where foam blocks with holes can be used as connectors for other foam structures with wire cores; however, it is not suited for use as a structural connection system that join many structural elements at a node to form a truss-type structure.
There are, moreover, a vast plethora of node constructions that have been designed for building construction systems, such as for modular trusses; but, they also appear to focus on fixed and/or rigid angle designs.
The technique and designs of this invention, on the other hand, readily and simply overcome these limitations both in the area of toys and in the more general areas of construction structures. They preferably involve the use of plastic foam, rubber or other flexible and resilient material for supporting transversely extending noodles or other construction elements, that may also be flexible as of foam for toys or more structural as of PVC pipe where appropriate. This allows the noodles or other structural elements to be detachably pressed into the connectors, with the connectors themselves being locally very flexible in bending, yet relatively strong in shear. The effect therefore is somewhat akin to lashing poles together with string: many poles can be brought together at a joint, and then all connected with string. In this case, however, instead of the time-consuming process of lashing, the invention uses a flexible (resilient) strip of material itself laced with holes that grip the structural elements pressed through them. The result is a connection method for truss-type structures that can be used as a toy, or on the other hand, where desired, as a building or construction technique for low-cost rapid assembly of structures, such as is required for emergency construction applications.